In English you have to know a word in order to pronounce it.
The “ou” diphthong in “hound” and “double” or “would” is pronounced differently. Or “ieu” in “lieutenant” vs “lieu”.
Or “oo” in “poor” vs “root”
Or “berry” in “berry” vs “strawberry”
I could go on forever. There’s no other western language I know of that behaves like that.
English is a quasi-phonetic language in that most words can be mostly pronounced how they're written, but in some cases it inherits the pronunciation of the language the word came from. I'd imagine many English speakers would consider this an undesirable quirk, though.
Indeed, there has been a tendency over the centuries, particularly in the US, to move towards writing words how they sound or pronouncing words how they're written. Lieutenant is an interesting example, since in the UK we pronounce that "lef-tenant" traditionally, but the US moved to the (IMO superior) "lieu-tenant". Nowadays, most young people would probably use the US pronunciation.
I do take some slight umbrage with the implication that some people seem to be making in this thread that language features can't be criticised or that one language can't be better than another. I'm don't see why this would necessarily be true. Even with spoken languages. There are a ton of annoying aspects to English that simply aren't issues in other languages, and I think it's fair to criticise other languages for their failings too. This is especially true of writing systems, which are human inventions rather than something we learn intuitively.
Logographic/logo-syllabic orthographies are harder to learn and remain proficient at than alphabets/abjads, for native speakers and second language learners alike. Alphabets are an innovation that improved on ancient orthographies and enabled a wider range of people to be able to communicate as easily by writing as they do by speaking. Besides the issue mentioned in the article, the writing systems in China/Japan are associated with other issues we rarely see here. Even dictionaries are a non-obvious challenge with logographic languages, which has resulted in several competing ways to sort words.
I don't think one can reasonably claim that in English "words are mostly pronounced how they're written". I mean, "i" can stand for /i/, /ɪ/, or /aɪ/, for example (and also for /ə/ if you don't count "ir" as a distinct grapheme). Although vowels at least (mostly) follow some predictable patterns based on syllables - but e.g. it's impossible to say whether "ch" stands for /k/, /tʃ/, /ʃ/, or /x/ without knowing the etymology of the word.
French can be pretty bad. Not as bad as English for reading, but it's much worse for writing because there are so many spelling options for the same thing.
> UK companies do not respect software engineers or reward them properly (not even stock), even interns in other places get paid 5x more than a senior engineer in the UK.
In monetary terms this is not true. A good software engineer can make 150-200K in the UK without going into finance or FAANG.
In real terms you are better off making 50-80K in Germany, Spain, France, Poland, Italy, etc…, especially if you have children and don’t own property.
Good for you, i work in finance in london and don't quite make that much, none of my friends in other places like JP, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Instagram ecc does make 200k pounds/year base, maybe in tc yes. Skill issue probably.
I would say 90-120k pounds/year base for a mid-senior engineer in FAANG/Finance is what most of us is being offered right now in London, based on my recent experience. What i feel is that many of us are being heavily undercut right now, me included, while consultancy keeps it's pace and everywhere outside London it's a bloodbath.
There is no Atlassian salary data for the UK on levels.fyi. I think you are just quoting American salaries.
Deliveroo L6 is 135k average, but I think it is more realistic to look at L5, which is just around 105k.
Also, 600 a day as a contractor is nowhere near 150K+, it is 132K paid to your company's account (assuming 220 working days a year - but that's not a salary!), or you go via an umbrella and then it is even less. A 600 daily rate is pretty average in London, but only if you work for a bank - which classifies as "finance", I guess... But then you are not an employee, you are a contractor, which is very different.
On levels.fyi there is one Atlassian P60 engineer (senior? staff?) in London making 230K+.
On L60-L50, I’m not saying that everybody makes 150K+; I’m saying that it’s not impossible for a good senior engineer (or staff or principal, as we call them nowadays) to make more than 150K at a non-FAANG company.
Maybe I got my maths wrong with contractors. I never did it myself, but I know they do crazy things with taxes (eg hiring their wife, son, dog and plants, to reduce the tax bill) and that they don’t take holidays. So I multiplied 600 by 5 and then by 50, got 150K and I assumed they’d make more than an employee earning the same.
I'd left the city 5 years ago, just before IR35 hit, so my info is not quite up to date, but in general I would say that nobody can work without taking any vacations - both for health and legal reasons. Some contracts may even stipulate a maximum number of days you can work in a year (that's where my 220 number is from).
And it used to be that you could do some tricks to lower your taxes, but there is a limit, and after the IR35 reforms many firms decided they don't want contractors, or they are pushing you inside IR35, which means PAYE taxes, and worse (because you still have to do the accounting for your company, pay corporation tax etc). So contractors are earning LESS than an employee with an equivalent salary, plus there are some extra burdens. It used to be that a regular engineer (without any management responsibilities) could achieve higher income in the short term being a contractor, but I'm not sure that is the case anymore.
Outside London, if you can find a place willing to take you on as a contractor it may still be worth it, because your daily rate will be less, meaning you may not reach higher tax brackets, and compared to almost everyone else around you you would still be king.
Apart for consultants which is what I recommend people get into for a high paying job, even looking at levels.fyi, the average pay is actually lower in the UK.
Take Samsara, on average basis an entry level engineer in the US pays higher than a semi-senior SWE (SWE II) in the UK, taking into account the base as well for a senior also looks dismal for UK engineers.
Even when these companies are public, UK salaries just don't seem to be competitive or appealing and this all just proves my point. Just go to the US, FAANG, finance or just be a consultant.
Often people don’t want advice, often people have stupid ideas and come to you for advice, hoping you’ll confirm their stupid idea is great. Then they have somebody to blame when the whole thing will blow up.
How can you look after an older population that doesn’t work and whose pensions increase every year at least as much as salaries, without either increasing taxes or increasing the working population?
I’m not Greek, but I hear/read this kind of argument made about Italians as well. No, Southern Europeans are not noble savages, they want and, arguably, need good infrastructures, which include phone and internet connections, exactly like the Northerner.
Putting aside for a second whether there's some truth to the stereotype or not, we truly live in strange times when description of a culture that values family life, the outdoors, good food and leisure over working at your phone at 2 am is automatically taken as an insult or provokes comparison to noble savages.
> Most people in Germany can't afford to buy an apartment
Most people in Germany don’t buy the apartments they live in, because renting in Germany gives you more or less the same rights as owning a leasehold flat in the UK. If you really want to buy a flat, tax-wise it is more convenient to rent it out and rent another one to live in.
In many cities there are rent control mechanisms that make renting extremely cheaper than buying.
Owning gives you the advantage of not flushing away a third of your income down the drain and instead owning something that's yours by the time you retire instead of paying your landlord's lease and then retiring in poverty as you won't be able to afford rent on your pension.
Have you seen new rent prices right now? It's definitely not "extremely cheap". It's only extremely cheap for those in grandfathered contracts.
A flat that cost 500-600K in Berlin would be rented out at 1000€ a month, that can’t increase more than the rent control allows. A mortgage would cost 3 times as much.
So you’d be better off renting and investing the deposit, the stamp duty, notary costs and the 2000€ you save each month in government bonds.
The ROI absolutely does not make sense but it's real. A large portion of the world believe that the only two investment classes are real estate and government bonds.
If landlords are forced to follow all regulations, the ROI on renting doesn’t work anywhere. In the UK it may still be profitable because you can evict tenants for the lulz, so they have to accept that properties are not maintained and that children may die of mould.
We would be all better off if people invested in the stock market instead of “investing” in properties (including landlords)
> If landlords are forced to follow all regulations, the ROI on renting doesn’t work anywhere.
Then, who builds the new apartments that people rent? If 50% of people in Germany rent and there is no ROI from building for rent, then who finances the new buildings??
I don’t know, maybe local authorities build them or probably new apartments are exempt from rent controls. But even in London, where my neighbour pays £3500K a month to rent a 65sqm flat, the landlord is earning much less than they would if they invested in the stock market. And they would be actually losing money if they carried out repairs, instead of having their tenant living like a rat.
If I owned a flat free and clear with a low rental yield as in many German cities (like 2-3%), I would sell the place to someone and then rent it from that person, then invest the proceeds into stocks.
People are overly obsessed with home ownership and being free and clear as soon as possible so they blindly repeat adages like "paying the landlord's rent" and "flushing your money away" without running the numbers.
Would you buy an apartment in Taipei, where a $1M apartment rents for $1k a month? I'd gladly pay my landlord's mortgage in that case.
It all depends on interest rates, rent to price ratio, and opportunity cost.
Anglo-Saxons are not obsessed with home ownership, they have to own their homes because renting in English speaking countries is hell. My neighbours change every other year, sometimes every 6 months, because the landlord increases their rent every year, evicts them when they ask for repairs (while expecting them to cook with a 10-15 year old oven that blows the power every time they set it to more than 180 degrees) and treats them like shit. I’m talking of people that pay in excess of 3K per month, normal people with normal salaries live like animals if they are renting.
Living in a flat while also owning it might have been a viable option in the past but that ship has sailed quite a while ago. In major cities - which is where the good joobs are - you're looking at down-payments of 200-300k to arrive at your current rent and even then you'd pay the mortgage for 30 years.
It's super difficult to rent a flat in Western Germany. There are literally long queues for viewing a single flat in Berlin. It's slightly better in the rest of Germany, but still difficult.
It is extremely hard also in London, I know people that have been searching for months. Here tenants practically have no protections, it’s like renting on Airbnb, rents increase at random every year.
Try to access an illegal online casino from Italy, for example.
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